


Off a cliff

by tekowrites



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekowrites/pseuds/tekowrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"An exhausted Billy ends up unconscious in his boyfriend’s arms."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off a cliff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cris-art](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cris-art).



> This is inspired by Cris’s two amazing pieces found here (http://cris-art.tumblr.com/post/26541210179/exhausted), and the end of Young Avengers & Runaways in Civil War.

Meeting the Runways left a deep impression on everybody, truly and utterly a change that made each and everyone of them a different person. Their banding together to save Billy and Teddy as well as their friends was something Billy will never forget for as long as he lives.

It wasn’t possible to forget it, it was so etched in his memory that after the fifth fitful night of sleep, Billy gave up on rest, and let the nightmares attack him while awake.

Not even the instant relief of Teddy’s presence, awake, full of life, and the end of the crisis could drown out the dark mass of hate that took over every base of feeling in his body.

It was a pure ugly and deformed shape that kept dragging him down, pulling his heels and inching him further into the darkness of hidden emotions. Billy’s brief moment of denial after Warden was thrown aside and he could finally find his own voice, did very little to abate the churning guilt in his stomach at not only thinking the very thought, but then voicing it out.

_‘I WANT YOU TO DIE.’_

_‘And our youth become killers...’_

Billy’s flinch at the memory was nothing compared to the anguish that welled up inside of him each time his stability was brought into question, each time he remembered that someone was going to die, and his words were being used as the base of that argument.

The sound of Teddy’s exhausted voice, cracked with the pain of several surgical cuts, explaining that the Young Avengers’ purpose was never to kill, was like a short stab at his belonging there, no matter how unintentional or direct it was, but the twist of that knife would always be the moment her heard _‘Your own teammate wanted this insect dead,’_

Billy hated, welcomed the feeling in moments of weakness, stood back and thought of how he was driven to a point where his feelings were exposed and vulnerable. Billy’s hate came in the form of doubt, did he really not mean those words? Did he really intend to act on them?

How far would he have gone, if his own voice hadn’t stayed just a sound in his head?

It invoked both fear in his heart and uncertainty, all of which made him place a controlled hold on his magic, his emotions and the still reality before him. He couldn’t let it out for fear of creating disorder around him, nor would it work towards making him seem the true Young Avenger he longed to be again. He felt like he didn’t qualify for that title anymore, not when he’d thought for a moment to end a being’s life and going against everything he ever believed in.

So it festered in his mind, the notion grew and grew to encompass his actions and paralyze any further thought.

Billy didn’t even notice the point at which he had finally shut down.

***

Teddy’s recognition of the change in Billy is quick, swift and alarming. He bids his time, he knows Billy needs space, thinking space and not physical, so he leaves it alone.

He’s natural, neutral to opinions about Billy’s ‘condition’ and waiting. Is what he keeps telling himself, but with every passing night where his body doesn’t connect the slightest bit with Billy’s supposedly sleeping one, his worry grows to immeasurable heights.

By the fifth night, the quiet shuffle of Billy off the bed has his heart breaking, piece by piece as Billy pads slowly towards the corners of the house not lit by imposing street lights from the windows.

He grabs hold of Kate the next morning, his urgency almost crushing her arm, and the look she gives him tells him just as much.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. You’re having a tough time with Billy, we can all see that.”

“Kate, I think I’m losing him this time. In the past, it took a couple of days, a prod, a single word after some of his elaborate zen-like trances, but now..”

“Are you sure? Billy’s stronger than that. Isn’t he always charging ahead before most of us get a chance to get up?”

“It’s what happened when we were captured. I’m pretty sure of that. I was knocked out for a while so I don’t have an exact idea of what his shutting himself away is about, but I know it has something to do with what he said at the end there.”

“You’re not going to tell me are you? You’re just dancing around it. I’m not sure how I can help if you want to keep it under wraps.”

“I need you, and I need the team for this. It doesn’t mean I’ll betray Billy’s trust to bring him out.”

“This is just for your information, but you’re only making it harder on yourself and Billy if you keep everything to yourselves.”

“It comes with the territory Kate.”

The plan is simple, and Teddy feels horrible for what he is about to unleash as each part of the plan is unraveled and explained to Kate. There needed to be a trigger. Billy’s entire loss was personal, it came from within himself. It wasn’t something Teddy could add on or remove from with a few words and promises, Billy needed to act it out, to have it in action, to not let it trap him.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t know the exact thing that had caged him, but admitting it to Kate would be bringing light to his own shame, to his own feelings of guilt. Teddy couldn’t regret saying that sentence, because it held so much importance to not leave it unsaid. It helped save two people that day and apologizing for being a Young Avenger would destroy any balance or barrier of respect he set for himself.

Teddy looked at the setting sky that night after his meeting with the rest of the team was over, their next stop was the start of that nightmare. He touched the empty bedside, and drew strength from Billy’s absence.

***

There was a buzz in his head, a constant nagging sound that sounded suspiciously like his own, only at full speed. Billy tried to open his eyes in panic, expecting to see himself strapped to a wall, Teddy on his right and uniform ripped to shreds. What woke him up though, was just Tommy.

He barely caught the words ‘see you’ when Speed had ran off the room with his uniform, the absurdity of it, the half hallucination is a small break out of his shell.

Billy’s first instinct is to rush after Speed, to ask and mock, but the minute awareness hits him, the thick cover of darkness pulls him back, clears his eyes and bounds him to bed.

He stays there, suffering and slowly lets it take over. It would have been final, would have swallowed him whole, had Billy not noticed the immediate quiet that was more deafening than his own chosen silence.

What was it that Tommy had said? Where was everyone? Where..where was Teddy? Billy’s pulse raced, blind panic was clearing through the fog, and all he could think of was that something was wrong. Maybe Tommy had asked him to help, maybe he was sitting there waiting while they were in danger.

He summoned all of his power and fought through rusted vocal cords to chant a locating spell.

***

At first, Billy couldn’t recognize the ruin around him, he turned, doing a full sweep of the area and wondered if he’d botched the spell. It would have been so easy to just settle back into the corner he’d created and mourn this new development, but his senses were in full alert, his skin prickled and the little hairs on the back of his neck stood.

Then recognitions set in.

The hole in the ground, the metal and wiring and the sight of dried blood turned the color of rust sparked and stocked Billy’s rage. The facility was abandoned, but all his memories of the short time spent there rushed back. He could close his eyes and see it all again, the knife that cut across skin, the needle sharp and unforgiving as it took away his voice, Teddy’s body desperately fighting to keep alive, and then the face of his tormentor as it laughed, dared him to save his friends.

It replayed over and over in his mind, and the hate bubbled to every edge of his body, setting his fingers alight with excess magic that kept flowing out in waves. He was going to destroy it, every little spec of its existence would disappear, every second spent in there would become dust.

Everywhere he looked, Warden’s face stood laughing at him, mocking him, cajoling him into making that statement a reality, proving what he really was. He casted blasts towards each and every illusion, feeling the dark matter inside his body crawl all over him, slip out of his mouth, cover his ears and move to block his eyes. It was so physical that Billy lost himself in it, believed the only way to break free would be to destroy himself as well.

The sudden strong grip around his middle was startling, and Billy had to fight through the haze to recognize it.

Somehow this display of his overflowing emotions made everything worse, he didn’t want Teddy to see this, didn’t want to be thought of as..as everything he’d been called in school. He hated himself for being in this situation and then he hated himself for having Teddy witness it all.

The fire around him grew stronger with each torturing thought he put himself through, and each emotion being released by it. Then the warm skin of Teddy’s arm began to harden, shift, and then rip apart to create bumps and ridges. He was incapable of saying anything, frozen both in mind and body, only his thoughts were any sign he was still there in that same situation. Not for lack of trying, words just refused to form, and though his throat was raw with screaming, he couldn’t hear a sound of it through the hiss and crackle in the bubble of magic around him.

“You can do it. Let it go Billy.”                    

He wanted to shake his head so bad, tell Teddy that he couldn’t stop it now, it was as if he’d been pushed, and he was that first domino in a circle of millions and had taken to tumbling them all down.

“Let all your feelings go, get it out, get him out of your system.”

The words clicked like a magic flashlight in his mind. For one clear moment Billy finally understood what he had to do, what he needed to do and what he’d been too blind, struck by grief, hate and self-doubt to consider.

He gripped Teddy’s forearms harder, feeling the scorched surface, and thought hard, harder than he’d ever had to before, to end this. Warden’s face was now contorted in pain, the smile falling off as every bone in Billy’s body was now posed to clear his words, his actions and the memory of him away from Billy’s mind.

His own body was now on fire, the burn of it grounding him, keeping him more there than he’d been the past week, shedding away the fog in his mind.

Teddy just held on as Billy spent himself in fighting the darkness that had been wrapped around him and robbed him of his own voice.

***

Teddy ground his teeth, the heat and fire on his body finally losing that hellish burn he’d first experienced as more and more of Billy’s magic got back into his control. He could see it then, something black, visible clawed its way out of Billy’s body. The bulk of the fire was around it, scorching every bit as it tried to get out and attack the nearest body around it.

When it lost the bulk of its size, Teddy could hear the faint sound of Billy’s voice. The sound was hoarse, as if Billy had been screaming for days around that chocking mass.

Billy’s body crumbled against his and it took him a while to notice the slight shiver for what it was. Teddy crouched a little, turning Billy inwards, shielding Billy’s face from view.

He looked around, startled to see that the force of Billy’s magic had been so powerful that it created a ledge out of their surrounding dirt and stone. In keeping Billy firmly on the ground, the only way he’d rise was to pull the ground up with him.

He signaled for the rest of the group, just as the first tremors of Billy’s sobbing made their self apparent. He looked down, tightened his hold on Billy and whispered anything and everything he wanted Billy to know, how proud he was of him, how strong he was, how this made him more of a Young Avenger than anyone. The wind moved the blanket that Kate brought, and it brushed against his back, announcing the end of their private moment. Later, later he’d see to it that Billy was put back together, later he’d explain how there was more to that experiment than they all thought, later.

“Let’s go home B.” 


End file.
